"The downside of designing for everybody, is that you're designing for nobody in particular. [...] When you live in a small space, it has to be tailored to your personal needs. If you have a bathroom and you never use it, that's a huge waste of space. If you're peeing outside anyway, why not keep the bathroom outside as an outhouse, and that frees up a lot of space."

Schafer's new designs, based on modular, customizable layouts, are designed to unleash that creativity. Also worthy of note is Schafer's insistence that tiny houses are not about some sort of minimalist puritanism—but rather a commitment to building right sized houses where all the space is being used effectively.

Ultimately though, says Schafer, he still believes that stuff gets in the way of creativity. His ideal design, he says laughing, would be a laptop with a roof over it.

More on Schafer's plans for a tiny house village/trailer park soon. (It will take a whole other post to just discuss the verbiage.)